Greetings once more, Friends everywhere!

I sincerely hope my last post have made clear the meaning of the metaphor I use in the title of my Book, “Bula man-river.” I also hope you can see yourself as an authentic Christian believer through the union you have with the Triune God, which, as a Bula man-river, is the very ground where you make your stand in life.

In this post, I hope to answer the question of good and evil in the world, how they affect us personally, and our understanding of them. It is my hope we will come to see that God, who encompasses eternity in His holy Love and goodness, is the very essence of Himself with which He desires to embrace humanity and all creation. With that end in mind, let’s begin. Think about this quote which a mother gave her incarcerated son,

                “A lie will die, but truth never dies, but lives forever”

Spoken glibly you might say, but its far-reaching hands extends out to touch us all without fail. A lie has its beginning in evil, while truth is centered in Love. Evil doers are living a lie that will die, while those who live by Love will shine as the stars in the heavens for all eternity. The antithesis of Love is evil. This tells us that knowledge can be categorized into two broad way of life – Love and evil! The knowledge that emanates from Love is eternal, while knowledge which stems from evil is temporary and will die. Man is given a mind with the abilities to choose which way to follow. The Bible tells us God is Love and Truth. (1 John 4:8; John 14:6) The Bible also tells us that Satan is the father of lies and evil. (John 8:44) God inhabits eternity with His Love. Therefore, Love is eternal. Evil is based upon lies that cannot be sustained in a world dominated by God’s Love. Love and truth are God’s signatures of eternity. Love inhabits eternity, as does Truth.

God is Love, and Love is God – 1 John 4:8 (Wiki Commons)

Living the Way of Love, or the Way of Evil

If Love inhabits all of time and space eternally, then evil exists in a vacuum. Like a bubble with a lease on ‘life,’ it pops and is gone forever. Solomon said it this way. It is temporary and cannot be sustained on an ongoing basis. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” (Eccl.1:2) Another translation this passage saying, “Utterly meaningless, all is meaningless.” A life without meaning is a lie, and becomes a passing, fleeting experience, which has no correlation with the eternity God inhabits. Solomon goes on to say, “There is no remembrance of former things…” (Eccl.1:11) Every vain, meaningless (evil) act is a bubble which has no real life. All things that people pursue in life can either exist in this meaningless bubble, or it lives in God’s eternal Loving purpose which expands forever into eternity. Evil will not exist as a viable option in God’s eternal Love environment. All lies evaporate and perish in the prism of Love’s eternal life-force.  So we read Solomon’s answer to his search for meaning in life, “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: fear God and keep His commandments. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (Eccl.12:13-14). All who live by Love are living the truth which brings the element of eternity to his or her actions and behavior.

Love

If these two ways are so contrasting with eternally far-reaching consequences, it behooves us to take a closer look and consider their origin, and how they affect us day-to-day, so we can be secure in His Love eternally. It makes us aware that all knowledge can be separated into two categories, and we are forced to make a choice as to which way to follow. Whether intentional or unintentional, they influence our choices in life. What is Love, what is its beginning? The Bible says, “God is Love” (1John 4:8). God has eternally existed in Love. So Love, read it as a noun and verb, has no beginning. Love has always been there, when nothing else was. It has eternally existed for “God is Love.” On the other hand evil and fear has a beginning, as we shall see later. Love is relational. Therefore we see God reveals Himself as Triune in these Bible passages: Matthew 28:19; John 14:26; 15:26; 2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 Peter 1:2. The reason God is Love is because He is Triune, and He is Triune because He is Love. He is relational in His Triunity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is ONE, but He is not “solitary,” He is “Trinitarian.” Triune means to live in interdependent Love. God is not made of Love, He IS Love. God is eternally ONE in His Triunity, therefore, in their Triune Love, they inhabit eternity. This is vital for our “solitary” human understanding – Love inhabits eternity, because the Three Persons of the Trinity, have always existed in their nature of Love. This is not our human narrative of love that’s conjured in our “solitary,” self-absorbed, expression man inherited from the devil.

Evil

How did evil come about?  How did it originate? We have established God is eternal and fills all eternity with His divine Love. So anything that exists in antithesis to Love has to have a beginning, and is temporal and fleeting in nature. Nothing will challenge the all-embracing God who fills all things seen and unseen. The Bible tells us that evil started with angelic beings. Angels are created beings, like humans, only made and composed of spirit. Some have become fallen angels, and led man away with them. From this, we realize anything that proceeds from things created, including angels and man, without the seed of Love, are temporal and will come to an end and cease to exist. The things that will abide are those that align with God’s Love, for the very fabric of all life is Love or God. That is why Jesus Christ is the only pathway to eternity. Only Jesus, who Himself is God with the Father and the Spirit, who is Love, can take man to the eternal end from which He Himself originate as God. So Paul affirms this wonderful truth with these short but telling words, “We are complete in Him, who is the Head of all principality and power” (Col.2:10).

Lucifer

The Bible tells us that all evil started with the archangel Lucifer. So we see evil has a beginning, Love does not. Love (God) has always existed from eternity, and fills all eternity. Love is the foundation of all life and existence. When we understand this concept that true life can only come from the Divine Triune Love, we will understand that everything that stands hostile to Love is temporary and carries the seed of self-destruction and will die like all things that’s has a beginning.  Lucifer was created in Love by God. The meaning of his name tells us a lot about God and His Love: Lucifer means, “morning star” and “bringer of dawn” (light). (wikipedia.com) So, he was made an archangel of light to reflect God and His Love. Then at some point in time, for reasons known only to him, he opposed all God stood for, and said, “I will ascend to the tops of the clouds. I will ascend to the heavens. I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly.” (Isa.14:12-14, emphasis throughout). If Lucifer can’t live in harmony with God as the other holy angels, then the only other way is to live in conflict with God and His Love, which is the way of fear and evil!

Lucifer fallen Morning Star from Milton’s Paradise Lost (Wiki Commons)

How can anyone displace, what for eternity, has been the essence of life and the bulwark for all goodness inhabiting and filling all eternity in God (Love)? Lucifer, somehow, became blinded to this Truth. So, here we find the birthplace of evil with the seed of its own death and destruction implanted in it. It is now inflicted upon man by the devil’s deception of Adam in Eden. (Gen.3) The light of God’s Love in Lucifer went out, and darkness (evil) filled the void. Lucifer brought darkness to mankind. God changed his name from Lucifer to Satan, which means “adversary.” Satan became the author of the “solitary” life in opposition to God’s “Trinitarian” life. The “solitary” life has its underpinning in fear and evil, not Love and interdependence (Triune). As the adversary of God, he promotes the “solitary” life in man, and channeling his spirit of evil, rebellion and strife, greed and avarice, distrust and fear, self-centeredness and jealousy, resulting in lack and broken dreams, depression and heartaches, sorrows, and ultimately, death. 

Adam & Eve Tempted by Devil To Follow Human Self-Determination of “Good and Evil”/Right and Wrong (Wiki Commons)

Holy Angels

With the fallen angels, there are innumerably more good angels who have remained faithful to God and His purpose in man. They exist as holy angels within the realm of God’s Love. They come to our aid as God’s servants to help and protect us from fallen angels who have become demons. Jesus said,“I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8-9). As humans and believers, we need not be afraid, for we all have guardian angels over us. In my Book, I give an account of angelic protection that save me, my wife, and two friends, from certain death. They are the most powerful bodyguards, and not for sale, yet priceless.

All Will Be Called to Account

Evil exists because the adversary of God continues to oppose all His Ways of Love and Truth. Evil derives its life from fallen angels who tremble before God because of the certain judgment to come against them and their evil deeds. (James 2:19) All who follow their evil ways will be brought before God’s judgment seat where they will be called to give account. Jesus made us understand why God allows evil in the world in the parable of the weed, where in the end, evil will once and for all be expunged and destroyed forever. (Matt.13:24-30) So, in this parable we see that even though evil exist, it does so at God’s (Love) sovereign will. When we read the following, “I form the light (Love) and create darkness (evil), I bring prosperity (Love) and create disaster (evil); I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isa.45:7, emphasis added), it must be seen in the context of God who inhabits eternity, and in that context, allows all to happen according to His sovereign, Loving purpose.The only place in the universe where evil is confined is upon our earth. (Jude 6) Good and evil proves the existence of God and the devil. It is because of His Love for mankind that He has shown the patience against the enemy, so man can come to and see the light of His Love and change from the dark ways of the enemy, and instead follow His Son. (2 Pet.3:9; 1 Pet.3:19-20) All this is happening in the wake of the holy angels who come to our side to help lead us to God.

Gravity is Real as God’s Love is Real (Wiki Commons)

Physical Gravity

This is not some goofy ‘religious’ stuff – it bears scientific relevance. Sometimes we think science and God are opposing factions, when it is one and the same. All of creation and the universe reflect God’s interconnected Trinitarain Being. The obvious conundrum seems to be that man cannot help explore things except from his “solitary” tunnel-vision perspective which he inherited from the devil. And the universe continues to endure on God’s Trinitarian, interrelated and unified, impetus. Man has to be reborn and see all things from God’s Trinitarian perspective – the Way He has created everything. (John 3:3) Let me clarify God’s Love by a true and life-like analogy. Think of the force of gravity in our physical environment, as the counterpart to God’s Love as the gravitational energy in His spiritual environment (eternity). In other words, what gravity is to our physical environment, Love is to our spiritual environment.

Spiritual Gravity

Naturally, all our acts in our physical environment has to compensate for our physical gravity. That is what happens as we grow up, we unconsciously correct ourselves to the gravitational force until we live with it intuitively. We take gravity for granted. All our actions also answer to another, equally real gravitational force – the spiritual gravity of Love. We may not realize this, but it does answer to, and affect all our actions more real than we care to know or admit. Why, because the spiritual gravitational force of Love inhabits eternity, including man’s actions. Everything, including man’s behavior has this implied consequence which connects with everything around him. True to the proverb, ‘no man is an island’ we can’t get away from this interconnected Love of God which governs all creation. And every evil act against Love, like defying the force of physical gravity, bounces back to hurt us. When we are up on a high elevation, we instinctively look for something to hold onto, we dare not challenge gravity. We’re aware of what gravity is capable of doing to us. We can seriously hurt ourselves in a fall, and probably get ourselves killed.

This is identical to the spiritual gravity of Love, when evildoers break the spiritual Love gravity it hurts them, just as surely as breaking physical gravity hurts anyone who disobeys it. We see this happening all over the world today before our very eyes. This spiritual gravity is real. It’s not merely an empty analogy. Everything in the created universe is connected and carries implied and conditional (good or evil) consequences and respective spinoff values. All the suffering, pain, sorrows, man’s inhumanity to man, we witness in the world today is the result of man defying the spiritual gravity of God’s Love which we all inhabit. Evil is confined to this earth and nowhere else in the universe. But more so Love, for Love exists in all of space and time and the universe, and is the spiritual gravitational force governing human relationships.

The Difference

Here’s the difference, we don’t learn to live within Love’s spiritual gravity, as we do within our physical gravity, because the spiritual gravitational effect (Love) does not immediately penalize us like the physical one. The Bible tells us this, “When evil people are not punished right away, (like physical gravity) it makes others want to do evil, too.” (Eccl.8:11, emphasis added) On the physical level, we learn very quickly that we need a chair to break our fall when we sit, but we fail to equate breaking Love’s spiritual gravity with the same presence of mind and innate urgency. So, we’re frivolous when it comes to evil, let alone investigate it. Thus, we suffer all its problematic consequences, living life in a bubble. Why, because man does not understand what Love truly IS. It is not defined by our “solitary” human narrative of it. The only reality in life is God’s Triune Love, and everything else is fleeting, and like a bubble, pops and disappears.

Understanding Love

Love is the spindle from which all of life rotates, and take its cue. We don’t understand this difference – if we are observant of what’s happening in the world around us, especially in human relations, we’ll see that the spiritual gravity is more real than the physical one. Both are real, both unseen. One is physical, the other is spiritual. Like physical gravity, Love is no respecter of persons. In a manner of speaking, you are your own judge. Your own actions, your heart, will be the judge of your life. That’s why people feel guilt when they do wrong, they have judged themselves. We ought not to judge anyone. (Matt.7:1-5) I judge no one, my calling, as it ought to be with every other human, is to owe no man anything except the debt of Love (Rom.13:8) But how can we Love when in Adam we stand condemned in our depraved, fallen state of being. The law says, “The one who sins is the one who shall die.” (Ezek. 18:20) All have sinned. (Rom.3:23) All will be called to give account of their lives before God. (Rom.14:12)

The Good Samaritan Love – Luke 10:25-37 (Wiki Commons)

Love Always Come Through

And right here, we see our magnificent God and Father who inhabits eternity in His Love, come through for us. He cannot and will not leave man to his fate. Why, because He is Love, and inhabits eternity in His Triune Being of Love. In His Love, He gives us His Son to atone for our evil and wicked ways, so we don’t have to stand condemned and judged. We can have all our guilt removed, and be given a new birth in His Love (Spirit) to lead and change us forever. (2 Cor.5:1-5)  “For God so Loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Eternal life will be given to any whose life will be composed of Love as God IS. This is how we learn to live like we owe each other nothing but the debt of Love in the Spirit’s power.

Love Will Always Be A ‘Mind Thing’

God’s spiritual gravity, God’s Love, is only made effective through the process of the mind, human thoughts, thought forms, and decision-making. That’s the paramount difference between these two gravitational forces. One is innate, physical, and mindless. The other requires the mind and our decision-making process to live within Love’s gravitational force. What does that tell us? It tells us first and foremost, Love is the continuous exercise of the mind of God. God, as the Father, Son, and Spirit, are not androids that thoughtlessly live and behave like machines. They have minds, and they have eternally decided to be ONE, for God is Love. (1 John 4:8) When God tells man “Owe no man anything except the debt to Love,” it is the exercise of our minds. (Rom.13:8, KJV) Love is a ‘mind thing.’ It’s in the human mind that the Spirit comes to us so we can be connected to His eternal Being of Love. (Rom.5:5) That is why, among all God’s creation, only humans have minds, because humans are made in God’s own image.

At creation, God or Love ‘decided’ and said, “Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness, and let them have dominion…” (Gen.1:26-27). He made us to have minds so we can Love as He does in His Triunity. If I were to surmise life in one word, it would be: life is all about making choices. Love is about making choices with our minds. We are always making choices within the gravitational force of Love in the Spirit. It is an exercise of the mind which produces all things good. (1 Cor.13) Our earth is the only place in the universe where Love can be birthed, lived, and exercised, because humans are made with God’s mind capable of Loving. We can learn to make a choice to Love as God does. Sadly, evil too is birthed in the mind, but as we saw, it exists in a bubble under God’s sanction, which, in His divine purpose and time will be brought to nothing. (Isa.45:7; Rev.21:1-7)

The Second Adam – Jesus

When Adam came on the scene in Eden, Satan deceived and convinced him to follow his evil ways which has since brought suffering, deprivation, pain and death upon mankind. (Gen.3) But because God inhabits eternity in His sovereign eternal Love, He was left with no option but to respond in His Love, answering this evil perpetrated upon man, by spontaneously promising from the beginning, to send the second Adam, His Son. Jesus would come, and have come, as mankind’s Savior to bring man out of the jaws of evil and death, and put him back on the path to Love and immortality. (1Cor.15:45) The second Adam, Jesus, the Son of God, was the only human who bore the full expression of God’s Love and the only human qualified to bring man back to God’s habitation of Love and eternity.

Jesus, the Second Adam, Depicted With Disciples at Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (Wiki Commons)

You see, God fills all of existence in His Love, where there’s no room for evil to take hold, let alone exist. God fills all time and space as we know it in His Triune existence. That is why Jesus, in His eternal deity in the Triune Being of God, bore the fullness of our humanity in Himself, taking on His human form through Mary, and lived a perfect, sinless and Loving life for us. In so doing, He embraced humanity’s eternity in Himself when He was crucified, resurrected, and ascended. He unified man in His divine/human Self with the Triune God for eternity in Love. Hence, we read Paul said this, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in Love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the Love of Christ, and to know this Love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen! ” (Eph.3:18-21, emphasis added).

Yes, this Love, in all its height, depth, length and breadth, expresses God’s fullness which encompasses all of life and eternity where no evil can exist. “Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all” (1 Chron.29:11). This tells us simply that God inhabits all of space and time (eternity) in His Love. The prophet Daniel speaks of man’s eternal future in God presence in this way, “Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever (eternity)” (Dan.12:3). Yes, God created mankind to be His very children He can Love into eternity. I hope you have found this post helpful, and adds a little to make your faith even more faithful.

Blessing

Until my next post, may the blessing of the God who ceaselessly expresses Himself in His dependable Triune Love, be with you today and give you strength for authentic Triune living as a Bula man-river.*

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to write me in the space provided below, or email me on bulamanriver@gmail.com.

Kiang                                                                                                                                                          (Your Servant in Christ)

* The “Bulamanriver” is the metaphor describing the union of man with the Love of the Triune God flowing in humans, making possible the “Triune Life” – the source of the miraculous life in man. To read the many facets of life of the Bula man-river, go to my website www.bulamanriver.com where you can order a copy of my Book. Remember, when you purchase my book all the proceeds go towards Jesus Christ’s work of dispensing the Gospel. Thank you for your support.

All scriptures are taken from the NIV Version 2011, unless stated otherwise

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